The last bluff

Brussels, Friday, June 26, 2015, shortly before 9 o’clock in the morning. Then-Premier Alexis Tsipras announces to his stunned colleagues something that none of them could have imagined until that moment: a referendum.

“There was a deafening silence in the room. The announcement seemed to create mixed emotions among those in attendance. [Former finance minister Yanis] Varoufakis was excited by the prospect of Greece bolstering its negotiating arsenal with a popular mandate. The rest were in a state of shock.” The is an excerpt from the book by Victoria Dendrinou and Eleni Varvitsioti, “The Last Bluff.”

Last Thursday morning, at the shortest meeting of the Political Secretariat in the history of SYRIZA, there was no Varoufakis in the room to celebrate. The shock had penetrated even the calmest temperament. But Tsipras had punctuated his seismic announcement with almost the same words: “You can’t change my mind. I have made my decision.”

One of the problems of an otherwise charismatic political figure (at least by the standards of the bailout era) was exactly what was implied in the conclusion of the two most critical decisions of his political career so far: He changed his opinion easily, depending on who he was talking to. It was a doublespeak at the limits of consciousness, therefore internally legitimized.

In the morning, he could comfortably chat with an angry youth of the most radical political component of SYRIZA and in the afternoon listen attentively to the admonitions of a critical analyst.

Tsipras never created his own political language because he was one man with two “languages”; a doublespeak that trapped him and his party. And whenever he found himself at that crucial moment when he really had to choose a side, to tell himself “Am I with them or the others?” he unleashed the most spectacular responses: a referendum in 2015, and a resignation in 2023. These were not bluffs. These were Alexis Tsipras.